The nonprofits fighting it, the evidence behind it, and the screening gap nobody talks about.
organizations verified
83organizations verified
you can join today
23you can join today
publish a screening policy
4 of 28publish a screening policy
Published November 1, 2026 · Every organization checked against its own live site
A note on how this guide is written
It says children with obesity, never obese children. That is the standard asked for by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Obesity Action Coalition, The Obesity Society and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and several organizations in this guide exist partly to end the other kind of language. Studies of families find that obese, fat, chubby and even overweight are among the words they find most offensive — while being, awkwardly, the clinical terms. Where a clinical term is unavoidable here, it is used about a condition and never about a child.
The scale of it
About one in five American children has obesity. The most recent measured national figure is 21.1% of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19, from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey run between August 2021 and August 2023 and published by the National Center for Health Statistics in February 2026. A further 15.1% are in the overweight range.
Two things about that number deserve saying out loud, because almost nothing written about childhood obesity says them.
The CDC currently contradicts itself. Its own “Childhood Obesity Facts” page still cites 19.7%, drawn from the 2017–March 2020 survey cycle. Both numbers are CDC, both are live, and they differ because they come from different survey periods. This guide uses 21.1% and cites the newer release — but if you have seen 19.7% quoted recently, that is why, and the person quoting it is not wrong so much as reading an older page.
And the data is three years old. NHANES field operations stopped in March 2020 and did not resume until August 2021, under a new sample design. The newest measured national figure for American children reflects data collected up to August 2023. That is not a criticism of anyone; it is a fact about what we actually know, and a guide that implies otherwise is quietly overstating its hand.
Two surveys, two numbers, both correct
You will also see 16% quoted, and it is equally right. NHANES measures children: height, weight, in person. The National Survey of Children’s Health asks their parents, and parent-reported figures run several points lower — 16.0% of school-aged children in 2024, around 7.6 million children, per the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The two are not in conflict. They are different methods, and anyone who puts them in the same sentence or the same chart is showing that they have not read either source.
What has actually changed
Over half a century the trend is unambiguous: obesity among American children has risen roughly fourfold, from 5.2% in the early 1970s to 21.1% today. Severe obesity — a BMI at or above 120% of the 95th percentile — has risen sevenfold, from 1.0% to 7.0%. That second number is the one that gets least attention and matters most, because severity drives almost every complication in the next section.
The shorter-term picture is less dramatic than the headlines suggest. Through the 2000s and 2010s the rate was comparatively flat, sitting between 16.8% and 19.3% for a decade. The latest cycle points upward again, and researchers running proper trend models have found real increases in several subgroups — but the size of that most recent jump should be read cautiously, because the survey changed its sample design in the middle of it.
It is not evenly distributed, and the gap is money
The cleanest income figures come from the 2017–March 2020 cycle, which had the sampling to support them. Among children in families at or below 130% of the federal poverty level, obesity prevalence was 25.8%. Among children in families above 350% of the poverty level, it was 11.5%. A child in the lowest income band is more than twice as likely to have obesity as a child in the highest.
Geographically the same pattern holds. Using parent-reported data for ages 6 to 17, seven states sit significantly above the national rate: Mississippi at 24.3%, West Virginia 23.0%, Arkansas 22.7%, Louisiana 20.9%, Delaware 20.5%, Alabama 20.2% and Maine 19.8%. Colorado is lowest at 10.1%. Remember which states those are; they come back later in this guide, and not in a good way.
What it does to a child
The American Academy of Pediatrics published its first-ever clinical practice guideline on childhood obesity in 2023, and it is the single best source on this. It describes obesity as “one of the most common pediatric chronic diseases,” affecting the health of 14.4 million American children, with “complex genetic, physiologic, socioeconomic, and environmental contributors.”
The physical picture
Sleep apnoea is the starkest contrast: 45% of children with obesity have obstructive sleep apnoea, against 9% of children at a healthy weight. It is associated with cardiovascular complications, neurocognitive impairment and reduced quality of life, and it shows up as snoring, disturbed sleep, daytime sleepiness, inattention and learning problems — symptoms a teacher sees long before a doctor does.
Abnormal cholesterol and triglycerides are three times more common: 43% of children with obesity versus 14% of children at a healthy BMI. One population study found 10% of children with obesity aged three to five already had elevated triglycerides and low HDL. The AAP calls these the silent cardiovascular comorbidities, and notes they track into adult life.
Fatty liver disease — now called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease — affects roughly four in ten children with obesity, against under one in ten children generally. Estimates vary widely with how the diagnosis is made, so treat the range rather than any single figure as the finding.
Type 2 diabetes, a disease that was essentially absent from paediatrics a generation ago, is rising faster in children than type 1. Incidence among 10- to 19-year-olds roughly doubled between 2002 and 2018, from 9.0 to 17.9 cases per 100,000 per year, with the highest rates among Black and American Indian young people. The AAP notes it has been documented in children as young as four.
High blood pressure affects between 5% and 30% of children with overweight or obesity, rising with BMI percentile — and obesity is, in the AAP’s words, “the strongest risk factor for hypertension in childhood.” In one large primary-care study, 8% of children aged three to five with obesity had elevated blood pressure, rising to 20% among 11- to 15-year-olds. In children with obesity it is associated with measurable vascular change and increased left ventricular mass during childhood — organ damage now, not risk later.
There is more: orthopaedic conditions including slipped capital femoral epiphysis and Blount disease, chronic kidney disease, idiopathic intracranial hypertension, and earlier puberty in girls, where severely obese girls had around 2.6 times the odds of starting menstruation before twelve. In boys the evidence is insufficient to say.
The part that is not physical
Here the AAP is deliberately careful, and this guide will be too. Children with obesity are more likely to have anxiety and depressive symptoms than their peers. But the guideline states plainly: “It is not clear whether obesity is a risk factor for these symptoms.” The relationship runs in both directions, and the best recent study supports obesity as a risk factor after adjusting for socioeconomic status and family history — which is a weaker and more honest claim than the one usually made.
What is not ambiguous is what other people do to these children. On this the AAP is unequivocal, and this is the most important sentence in the entire evidence base for anyone designing a children’s programme:
Individuals with overweight and obesity experience weight stigma, victimization, teasing, and bullying, which contribute to binge eating, social isolation, avoidance of health care services, and decreased physical activity… these factors may… contribute to worsened morbidity and mortality, independent of excess adiposity.
Read that last clause again. Stigma harms children independently of their weight. It is not a side-effect of the condition; it is a second condition, and it is one that a volunteer, a coach or a teacher can inflict or prevent in a way they cannot inflict or prevent the first. The AAP adds that shaming happens “at school and even at home in misguided efforts to ‘motivate’ the child,” and that “families will not continue to seek help if they experience stigma.”
One study of 1,555 students across two high schools found weight-based victimisation left 40 to 50% of adolescents feeling sad and depressed, worse about themselves, bad about their bodies, and angry. Some felt afraid. The researchers note these children are targeted by peers, by parents and by teachers.
The counterpoint that makes the rest credible
Children with obesity are more than five times as likely to have obesity as adults — a pooled relative risk of 5.21 across 15 cohort studies and 200,777 people. That figure is real and it is widely quoted. What is almost never quoted is the other finding from the same analysis:
70% of obese adults were not obese in childhood or adolescence… this analysis shows that obesity is primarily an adult-onset condition.
The authors go further, warning that “targeting obesity reduction solely at obese or overweight children needs to be considered carefully as this may not substantially reduce the overall burden of adult obesity.” And then, crucially: “However, the morbidity impact of obesity in childhood itself must also be considered.”
That is the honest case for this work. Not that fixing childhood obesity fixes adult obesity — the evidence does not support that. But that a child with sleep apnoea, a child with elevated blood pressure at eleven, a child who dreads swimming lessons, is harmed now, and that is reason enough.
What it costs
The figure you will see quoted is $19,000 in additional lifetime medical costs per child with obesity. It comes from a 2014 analysis, covers direct medical costs only, and inflation alone makes it conservative today.
The figure you will almost never see quoted alongside it is this: the additional medical cost of a child with obesity is about $116 per year, or $310 for a child with severe obesity. Both are true. The gap exists because nearly all of the cost accrues in adulthood. A guide that gives you only the large number is selling you something.
What actually works
This section will disappoint anyone hoping for a simple answer, and that is the point. The honest summary is that intensive treatment works modestly, and population prevention programmes barely work at all — and that a great deal of nonprofit programming sits in the second category.
The treatment that has evidence behind it
Both the AAP and the US Preventive Services Task Force land in the same place, and both put a number on it. The AAP recommends intensive health behaviour and lifestyle treatment, specifying that “the most effective treatment includes 26 or more hours of face-to-face, family-based, multicomponent treatment over a 3- to 12-month period.” The USPSTF, reviewing the same literature independently in 2024, recommends comprehensive behavioural interventions of “at least 26 contact hours or more.”
The effect: a mean difference of −0.7 BMI points across 28 randomised trials, rising to −1.4 BMI points and −2.6 kg for interventions that cleared 26 contact hours and included physical activity sessions. Modest, real, and dose-dependent.
Two things follow from that threshold, and both matter to anyone running a programme. First, short-course and low-intensity programmes should not be expected to change weight status — not because they are badly run, but because the evidence says the effect scales with hours and 26 is where benefit starts. Second, the AAP notes bluntly that “availability of intensive health behaviour and lifestyle treatment or other treatments is generally poor,” and that it is “costly to administer and inconsistently paid.” The intervention that works is the one families mostly cannot get.
One genuinely reassuring finding for anyone worried about harm: across 18 trials, the USPSTF found no increase in adverse events — including disordered eating — and no decrease in self-esteem or body satisfaction.
School programmes: very small effects, and none at all in teenagers
Two Cochrane reviews published in May 2024 are the most complete answer available. For children aged 5 to 11, across 172 studies and 189,707 children: activity-based programmes, alone or combined with diet, produce small reductions in BMI — around −0.11 BMI points at medium-term follow-up, at moderate certainty. Dietary interventions alone show little to no effect at any follow-up. Long-term effects largely disappear.
For adolescents aged 12 to 18, across 74 studies and 83,407 participants, the conclusion is blunter:
Strategies to change adolescents’ diet, activity, or both, make no or very little difference to BMI.
There is a pattern in that review worth understanding, because it recurs across this whole field. Where the certainty of evidence is high or moderate, the effect is zero. The larger-looking effects all sit on low or very-low certainty evidence from one to three small studies. That is the characteristic shape of a null result dressed up by small-study noise, and it is why the reviewers wrote what they wrote.
None of which means school programmes are worthless. Cochrane itself notes that “small population-level reductions could matter for public health.” Children get to run around, eat something fresh, learn to cook. Those are good outcomes. They are simply not the outcome of moving a population’s BMI, and a programme that promises the second will always look like a failure.
What does not work
BMI report cards sent home to parents. The Fit Study randomised 79 California schools and followed 28,641 students for up to three years. The effect on BMI z-score was indistinguishable from zero at one year and at two years. Meanwhile weight satisfaction declined more among students who had been weighed at school, and peer weight talk increased. The authors’ conclusion: “Body mass index reports alone do not improve children’s weight status and may decrease weight satisfaction.”
Diet-only school programmes, per both the 2024 and 2019 Cochrane reviews. Essentially all diet and activity prevention programming in adolescents, per the high-certainty nulls above. And fad diets and quick fixes, which the European Association for the Study of Obesity notes “lack evidence-based support” and are “linked to high rates of weight regain.”
Where the authorities disagree
On medication, the AAP and the USPSTF genuinely diverge, and a guide that reports only one is incomplete. The AAP gives a Grade B recommendation that clinicians should offer weight-loss pharmacotherapy to adolescents 12 and older with obesity, as an adjunct to lifestyle treatment. The USPSTF, a year later, concluded that “the totality of the evidence was found to be inadequate” — only one trial per medication lasted longer than two months, weight rebounds soon after discontinuation, and there is no evidence at all on the harms of long-term use.
Both are authoritative. Both are current. The honest position is that this is an unsettled question moving quarterly, and anyone writing about GLP-1 medications in children should date-stamp what they write.
The thing to stop saying
A great deal of nonprofit work in this field is built on the food desert premise: that putting a supermarket within reach of a family changes what that family eats. The best evidence does not support it. A large economic study found that “entry of a new supermarket has economically small effects on healthy grocery purchases,” that differential supermarket density explains no more than about 1.5% of the healthy-eating gap between high- and low-income households, and that households in ZIP codes with no supermarket at all still buy 85% of their groceries from supermarkets. The AAP’s own guideline calls the neighbourhood food environment’s association with children’s BMI “mixed.”
This is said with respect, because the organizations working on food access are doing real and valuable things — feeding children, teaching them to cook, getting fresh produce into homes that had none. Those are good in themselves. The evidence simply does not support “build a supermarket and childhood obesity falls,” and overstating it makes the whole field easier to dismiss.
The same applies to the oldest story of all. The European Association for the Study of Obesity puts it better than we could:
Dispel the oversimplified view that obesity is solely determined by unhealthy eating and lack of exercise… consistent obesity management over the long-term is much more complex than the outdated notion of ‘energy in, energy out’.
Heritability studies put the genetic contribution to an individual’s obesity risk at 40% to 70%. Short sleep is associated with a 76% increased risk in younger children. Several common medication classes — glucocorticoids, antipsychotics, antiepileptics — cause weight gain directly. None of that is a child’s character.
The screening gap
We came to this research to map a field. We found something else on the way, and it is the reason this guide is published by a background-check company rather than a health charity.
Of the 83 organizations verified for this guide, 28 use volunteers. Those volunteers run recess, coach a 5K, pack produce in a school cafeteria, sit with a child in a garden. Of those 28 organizations, exactly 4 publish a volunteer screening policy on their own website.
Those four are Girls on the Run, which checks every volunteer with direct participant contact every 24 months and extends it to board members and running buddies; Playworks, which names its vendor, states FCRA compliance, verifies government ID and sets an 18-plus minimum; Special Olympics, whose governance rules require a criminal check completed before a Class A volunteer participates, with two non-family references and re-screening every three years; and First Tee, which checks everyone working with youth and requires SafeSport training.
That is the list. It is worth saying as clearly as possible what the other 24 organizations have and have not told us: they have not published a policy, which is a fact about their website and not a fact about their safeguarding. Many of them certainly screen. Several are household names with professional risk management. This guide records “not stated” and never “does not screen,” and we would ask anyone citing it to keep that distinction.
The clearest single illustration comes from Brighter Bites, which is in many ways the best volunteer operation in this guide — 10,263 unique volunteers giving 52,068 hours in 2025, all of it properly counted and published. Asked about screening, their volunteer page says this:
Each school district and site is different.
That is not evasion. It is an accurate description of how this actually works. The volunteer belongs to the nonprofit; the children belong to the school district; and the screening standard is whatever the district the volunteer walks into that morning happens to require. A volunteer packing produce at one elementary school may have been checked to a standard that the school two districts over would not recognise, or would not require at all.
Set against that, consider FoodCorps. It no longer places volunteers — since the 2026-27 cycle its food educators are paid employees. And its position description states that every one of them must pass a three-part check: the National Sex Offender Public Registry, state criminal background checks, and an FBI fingerprint-based criminal history check, because the role “includes access to vulnerable populations.”
Same children. Same classrooms. Same cafeterias. The paid educator gets a fingerprint check because somebody wrote a position description. The volunteer beside them gets whatever the district requires.
We are not going to pretend we have no stake in pointing this out. We sell background checks. But the observation stands on its own: a field that puts tens of thousands of adults into elementary schools has almost no public record of how — or whether — those adults are checked, and the people best placed to change that are the organizations themselves, by writing down what they already do.
The organizations
What follows is every organization we could verify, grouped by what they actually do. 23 of them publish a way to get involved, and those carry a link straight to it. Where an organization’s own site contradicts itself, or where a well-known figure turned out to be undated or third-hand, we have left the number out and said why rather than repeat it.
The national picture
These are the organizations working on childhood obesity at national scale — through schools, through parents, through the systems that decide what a child eats at eleven in the morning. Read the notes: this is a field that has repositioned heavily over the last decade, and several of the best-known names no longer describe themselves the way their press coverage does.
Works through school districts and parents to build school nutrition, physical activity and social-emotional health programs, funding school wellness grants and parent-led change.
NourishEd
EnergizEd
ConnectEd
Every Kid Healthy Week
Reach
Reached millions of children in thousands of schools(actionforhealthykids.org)
Volunteers: Genuinely volunteer-involved: Parent Ambassadors in Florida and Texas, 178 active parent volunteers in New York, and Team Healthy Kids race fundraisers.
Announced a strategic affiliation with GENYOUth in October 2025. They remain two separate 501(c)(3)s with their own CEOs — it is not a merger.
Scores and certifies schools and youth-serving organizations against health benchmarks, and supplies free assessments, action plans and trainings for school wellness policy.
America's Healthiest Schools
Action Center
The Walking Classroom
Smart Food Planner
Reach
31.1 million children nationwide over more than 15 years(healthiergeneration.org/about-us)
Their contact page gives Portland, Oregon; their IRS filings give Washington, DC.
Supplies a no-cost healthy-habits curriculum, delivered by trained coaches, to elementary schools and youth programs.
The LifeStar Challenge
StepUp4Kids
Volunteers: Invites people to join as a coach, donor, volunteer or intern. Coaches deliver the curriculum.
Their widely quoted "50,000 students across Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and Ohio" comes from a third-party giving profile, not their own site, so it is not published here.
Leads a national effort embedding healthy eating and physical activity into state early care and education systems, alongside a pediatric healthy weight clinic.
Healthy Kids, Healthy Future
Technical Assistance Program
Physical Activity Learning Sessions
Nourishing Healthy Preschoolers
Reach
Their Healthy Weight and Wellness Clinic reports 2,200+ children and teens a year(nemours.org/services/childhood-obesity.html)
Healthy Kids, Healthy Future continues the work of Let’s Move! Child Care, launched in 2011.
Through its Kids Eat Right initiative, equips registered dietitian nutritionists with materials to teach children and families about healthy shopping, cooking and eating.
Kids Eat Right
Kids Eat Right Month
Food and Nutrition Security
Food as Medicine
Volunteers: Runs a dedicated volunteer opportunities page.
Link /resources/kids-eat-right — the shorter /kids-eat-right path returns a 404.
Writes the national standards for K-12 physical education and health education and trains the teachers who deliver them.
National Physical Education Standards
National Health Education Standards
Health. Moves. Minds.
Physical Best
A professional association for teachers, not a direct-service youth program. Not to be confused with Shape Up America!, a separate organization that terminated after 2017.
Patient advocacy and education for people affected by obesity, including a childhood and adolescent education library for parents, plus work against weight bias.
Your Weight Matters Convention
OAC Health Talks
Weight Matters Magazine
Stop Weight Bias
All-ages and adult-weighted. Childhood obesity is an education section, not a dedicated program. Their work against weight stigma is why this guide uses person-first language throughout.
Brokers commitments from food companies, cities and food banks to increase produce and healthy-food access for families, and runs produce-distribution programs.
Good Food at Home
Good Food Cities
Veggies Early & Often
Healthy Hunger Relief
Reach
51M+ servings provided across 70 cities(ahealthieramerica.org)
Created alongside — but separate from — Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! in 2010. It has since repositioned from childhood obesity to food access and equity, and describes itself that way today.
A volunteer link exists under Ways to Support, but no roles are described.
Getting kids moving
These are the organizations that fight childhood obesity by putting children in motion — on a running track, a mini-pitch, a playground at recess. They are also the most volunteer-dependent organizations in this guide: a season of Girls on the Run does not happen without 39,287 coaches, and a Playworks recess does not happen without an assistant playground coach who committed to one day a week for a school year.
Runs a 10-week after-school curriculum for girls in grades 3–8 that pairs social-emotional lessons with running, ending in a celebratory 5K.
Girls on the Run
End-of-season 5K
Run with the Girls
Group Volunteer Opportunities
Reach
Over 2.8 million lives transformed; 160+ councils; programming in 11,000+ locations(girlsontherun.org/about-us)
Volunteers
39,287 volunteer coaches inspired 173,546 girls across North America
Volunteers: Volunteer-run at the team level. Coaches lead the curriculum; running buddies ("Run with the Girls") pace a girl through her 5K. Junior Coaches, substitute coaches and council-assigned running buddies are named in the Coach Policy Manual.
Every volunteer with direct participant contact is checked every 24 months — national criminal and sex-offender search, SSN validation and a previously-used-name search. It covers special-event volunteers, board members and running buddies. Councils administer it locally.
Puts trained play coaches and staff training into elementary schools so recess becomes safe, inclusive and physically active.
Playworks Coach
Playworks Pro
SparkPlay
The Great Recess Framework
Reach
Over 2 million children in 3,000+ schools(playworks.org)
Volunteers: Named roles with real commitments: Assistant Playground Coach (one day a week, 11am–1pm, for a school year), Junior Coach Partner (one day a week, 4–6pm, for a school year), Sports League Support and Special Events Volunteer. Some regions are not accepting individual applications.
The clearest disclosure of any organization in this guide. Submitting the volunteer form automatically triggers a check through their named vendor, Verified Volunteers; the check is stated to comply with the FCRA; identity is verified against a US government-issued ID; volunteers must be 18 or older.
Runs year-round sports training and competition for people with intellectual disabilities, including a motor-skills program for children aged 2–7.
Young Athletes (ages 2–7)
Unified Sports
USA Games
Healthy Athletes
Reach
207 countries and jurisdictions. Young Athletes participants developed motor skills more than twice as fast as peers.(specialolympics.org/our-work/young-athletes)
Volunteers
963,899 volunteers and 411,382 coaches worldwide
Volunteers: The most volunteer-intensive organization here. Roles include coach, official, event staff and Unified Partner. Governance splits volunteers into Class A — regular close physical contact with athletes, such as coaches, drivers and overnight hosts, or anyone with administrative or fiscal authority — and Class B.
The volunteer and coach counts are global, not US-only.
Written into the US supplement to their General Rules: Class A volunteers must authorise a criminal background check with state and local police, completed satisfactorily *before* they participate, plus photo ID, two non-family references and written screening answers. Training materials describe re-screening every three years.
Uses golf plus a life-skills curriculum, delivered by trained coaches at chapters and golf courses, to build character in kids.
First Tee Girls' Academy
Character Gap
Coach training
Youth Safety / SafeSport
Volunteers: Volunteer coaching is the core model — the route in is literally called "coach-volunteer". Their coaches page is titled "The Heart of First Tee: Our Coaches".
Many local chapters are separately incorporated with their own EINs; the number above is the national entity.
All employees, coaches, volunteers and board members complete a background check before working with youth, alongside mandatory SafeSport training, tied to the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and SafeSport Authorization Act of 2017.
National·West Palm Beach, FL·Founded 1981·EIN 59-2134374
Trains and certifies the volunteer coaches, officials, parents and administrators who run community youth sports.
Start Smart
Ready, Set RUN!
Hook A Kid On Golf
Certified Youth Sports Administrator
Reach
Partners with more than 3,000 community-based organizations(nays.org)
Volunteers
More than four million coaches, parents, officials and administrators trained since 1981
Volunteers: Its customers *are* volunteer coaches. NAYS offers coach membership, Select Coach Training and a youth sports safety and first aid course, plus "Rate Your Coach" and "Report a Coach" tools for parents.
No screening policy published
A different case from the rest: NAYS does not screen its own volunteers, it publishes guidance for the field — a background-checks resource and a publication, "Background Screening in Youth Sports". That makes it the natural citation for what screening norms in youth sport actually are.
Free after-school programs combining soccer, poetry and service-learning for students it calls Poet-Athletes.
SCORES Cup
Atletas Poetas
Poet-Athlete Movement
Reach
13 affiliate cities, 300+ Title I schools, 15,000 Poet-Athletes(scoresnetwork.org)
Volunteers
800+ volunteers and 800+ coaches
Volunteers: Volunteers serve as referees, photographers, board members or through corporate service days. Coaches are counted separately from volunteers in their own figures.
Their SCORES Cup section says 15 cities, which conflicts with the 13-affiliate figure elsewhere on the site.
Builds and transforms playgrounds and play spaces in communities that have been denied them, so kids have somewhere safe to be active.
25 in 5 Initiative to End Playspace Inequity
Community-Built Playspaces
Green Playspaces
Play Everywhere
Reach
17,000+ playspaces built or transformed, reaching 12 million kids(kaboom.org)
Volunteers: The community-build model is volunteer-powered: a single Build Day in which groups of residents lead recruitment and the build itself. No role titles are published.
Their "1.5M+ community members engaged" counts participants, not volunteers.
Funds free soccer-based after-school programming and builds small hard-court mini-pitches in under-resourced neighbourhoods to raise kids’ physical activity.
Soccer for Success
Safe Places to Play
Just Ball League
Coach-Mentor Training
Reach
1 million children engaged annually; 900+ mini-pitches opened(ussoccerfoundation.org)
Volunteers: Delivery runs on coach-mentors, but the Foundation never calls them volunteers — they are trained adults at partner sites.
Their "1,000 mini-pitches and 1 million children annually by the end of 2026" is a goal, not an achievement.
Donates brand-new sports equipment, apparel and footwear to youth programs in high-need communities so cost is not a barrier to playing.
Equip-A-Kid
She Who Plays
Play Champions
Reach
Over $137 million in new gear since 2003, reaching 11 million kids in all 50 states(goodsports.org/about-us)
Volunteers: Warehouse and gear-processing work rather than youth-facing roles: sorting and recording equipment, kitting and packing, tagging and labelling, product prep. Suitable from age 12.
Gets kids running or walking the distance of four marathons over a season, logged by coaches through a tracking app.
Marathon Kids Connect
Girls Movement Program
Run and Read
Volunteers: Coaches come from educators, parent volunteers, PTA members, after-school staff and community leaders. The volunteer page itself is thin — event help and work at their Austin office.
Their two published reach figures — 518,000 kids last year, and 300,000 kids across 1,000 schools — do not reconcile, so neither is quoted here.
Builds free neighbourhood street-soccer parks and runs year-round programming and learning centres alongside them.
Street Soccer Parks
Learning Centers
SSUSA National Cup Series
Reach
26 Street Soccer Parks built coast to coast, 20 complete and 6 in progress(streetsoccerusa.org)
Volunteers: Recruitment is devolved to each city page, every one carrying an "Apply to be a Volunteer or Coach" link. No roles or requirements are published nationally.
Runs free year-round soccer combined with academic support, English language learning and mentorship for newcomer and refugee youth.
Youth Services
Access to Play
Inclusive Coaching
Systems Change
Reach
1,857 participants in the Bay Area in FY2025(soccerwithoutborders.org)
Volunteers: Soccer coaching, academic tutoring, driving vans and refereeing. Volunteers must be over 18, live near a programme, and commit to at least one event a week for six months.
Their homepage impact counters render as zeros — a front-end bug, not a real figure.
No screening policy published. Their coaching self-audit refers to "safeguarding practices" and "coach onboarding" without saying what onboarding involves.
Recruits, trains and places sports coach-mentors in under-resourced communities, and trains other organizations’ coaches in sports-based youth development.
Up2Us Coach
Up2Us VISTA
Up2Us Sports Training
Reach
Over 3,900 coaches trained since 2009, affecting nearly 100,000 young people(up2us.org)
Volunteers: Not a volunteer model. Coach-mentors serve as AmeriCorps members and VISTAs on stipends, not as unpaid volunteers.
Runs after-school and summer Clubs offering supervised physical activity, sports and health programming alongside academic and character programs.
Healthy Habits
SMART Girls
SMART Moves
Passport to Manhood
Reach
Nearly 5,500 local Clubs reaching more than 4 million children and youth each year(bgca.org/about-us)
Triple Play, their best-known health programme, no longer appears on their current health pages and appears to have been folded into Healthy Habits.
No screening policy published
Their safety page speaks of "layers of safety policies and guidelines" without describing screening. For a household name in youth volunteering, no volunteer figure or screening statement could be verified on their public site.
Pays youth sports registration fees directly for kids in families on income-based assistance, so cost is not what keeps them off a team.
Every Kid Sports Pass
T-Mobile Little League Call Up Grant
kidsinthegame.org redirects here; this appears to be the former Kids in the Game. A separate New York organization of the same name is a different entity.
Funds and promotes school-based physical education and activity programs to get inactive American kids moving.
PHIT KIDS Academy
PHIT Center
AMPED Program
Two EINs appear in IRS records under similar names, so none is published here. Their site carries no dated content, and their GO! Grants programme no longer appears on it.
No screening policy published
What a child eats
Fresh produce in a backpack on a Friday. A cart that turns any classroom into a kitchen. A cafeteria where somebody actually cooks. These organizations work on the other half of the problem — and several of them run on volunteers who spend their mornings in elementary schools.
Sends home weekly bags of fresh fruit and vegetables to families through elementary schools and summer sites, paired with nutrition education.
Fill the Plate
Educate
Make It Great
Food is Medicine / Produce Rx
Reach
264,354 students, teachers and families across 13 cities in 8 states in 2025(Brighter Bites 2025 Annual Impact Report)
Volunteers
10,263 unique volunteers giving 52,068 hours in 2025
Volunteers: Two named roles. Produce Packing: set up assembly lines, unload cases weighing up to 50 pounds, discard spoiled items, fill bags, clean up. Produce Distribution: welcome families, load boxes into cars, move pallets, check families in, direct traffic. Most shifts fall during school hours.
The clearest statement of the pattern this guide is about. Their volunteer page declines to give a blanket policy: "Each school district and site is different," with requirements listed per event. The decision sits with whichever district the volunteer walks into.
Places full-time food educators and school-nutrition staff inside partner schools and districts to teach food education and improve school meals.
FoodCorps in Your School
Food Education Microcredential
Kindred Fellowship
Reach
More than 1.5 million kids(foodcorps.org)
FoodCorps no longer places AmeriCorps service members. Since the 2026-27 cycle these are paid employee positions. Most published coverage still gets this wrong.
Publishes a screening policy
They screen their paid educators, not volunteers: a three-part check clearing the National Sex Offender Public Registry, state background checks, and an FBI fingerprint-based criminal history check, because the position "includes access to vulnerable populations". That is the standard this guide holds the rest of the field against.
Runs school garden-and-kitchen classrooms and publishes the edible-education curricula and training that other schools copy.
Edible Schoolyard Berkeley
Edible Schoolyard Stockton
Edible Education Curricula
Edible Education 101
Volunteers: Garden volunteers at the Berkeley site: weeding, watering, harvesting and planting, with low-physical-impact work always available. Weekday hours on Tuesdays and one Saturday work party a month, open to all ages.
Funds and supports youth-run vegetable gardens whose harvests are donated to people in need, plus free garden-to-table dinners.
Grower Program
Katie's Krops Dinners
Outdoor Classroom
Free & Fresh Fridge
Reach
More than 950,000 lbs of fresh produce donated(katieskrops.com)
Volunteers: Volunteers of all ages work garden days, dinners and meal distributions. Openings are announced only through their volunteer email list, first come first served, busiest in spring and summer. Group volunteer days are no longer accommodated — each person signs up individually.
Every garden is run by children — the organization grew from one girl’s cabbage seedling in 2008. Their own site gives two different garden counts, so neither is quoted.
Supplies schools and community organizations with a portable kitchen plus a standards-aligned curriculum and training, so any classroom can teach kids to cook.
The national hub connecting, training and advocating for people bringing local food and food education into schools and early-care settings.
School Meals Campaign
Early Care and Education
Native Communities
Farm to School Month
Reach
More than 20,000 farm to school practitioners and supporters in the network(farmtoschool.org/about)
Not its own 501(c)(3) — fiscally sponsored by Tides Center. Its larger school and student figures are USDA Farm to School Census estimates for 2022-23, not its own reach.
Funds and supports grassroots nonprofits that grow food in their own communities, and distributes garden beds and grow bags.
Big Green Table grants
Reach
204 grassroots organizations funded and 20,675 garden beds distributed across 104 cities(biggreen.org)
Built its reputation on school Learning Gardens; it now describes a grantmaking model for community food production generally, with many school and youth garden grantees.
Grantmaker funding school gardens and children’s nutrition-education programs run by schools and local nonprofits.
Sprouting School Gardens Grant
Growing Healthy Kids Grant
Wellness Across the Lifespan Grant
A useful funding route for the smaller organizations in this guide: awards run up to $5,000, and the next cycle opens in spring 2027.
No screening policy published
Close to home
National organizations set standards. These ones sit down with a family. Children’s hospitals run the clinics, city coalitions run the gardens and the walk-to-school routes, and a handful of state programs hold the whole thing together. If you are looking for somewhere to actually volunteer, start here — and read the section that follows on the states where there is almost nothing left to join.
A statewide childhood obesity prevention program embedding the 5-2-1-0 message into Maine’s schools, child care, out-of-school programs, health care practices and workplaces.
Let’s Go! 5-2-1-0
Small Steps
Partners in Excellence
Let’s Go! Learning
Reach
Partnered with 727 programs reaching over 169,877 children and 197,884 adults in 2025 — 284 early care programs, 146 schools, 110 health care practices(mainehealth.org/lets-go/our-impact)
The best-sourced reach figure in this entire guide: dated, itemised, and published by the organization itself. 5-2-1-0 means five fruit and vegetable servings, two hours or less of recreational screen time, one hour of activity, zero sugary drinks.
Puts school gardens, active classrooms and recess and walk-to-school programming into greater Richmond schools.
Learning Gardens
Game On, Girl!
Active Classroom Teacher Certification
Safe Routes to School
Volunteers: The most volunteer-friendly organization in this section. Learning Garden clean-up groups of 8–15, garden upkeep "Dig In" sessions, corporate garden builds, skilled volunteering in admin and communications, a Young Professionals Board, event support at Fruit and Veggie Week and Bike to School Day, and coaching in Game On, Girl!
Their published student counts vary widely across sources, so none is quoted. Their 50th garden opened in 2025.
Pushes school food, physical activity, green schoolyards and school health services toward healthier standards, mostly through Chicago Public Schools and Illinois state policy.
Space to Grow
Cooking up Change
Fit to Learn
Parents United for Healthy Schools
Reach
Space to Grow has built 41 schoolyards, with four more due in summer 2026(Kresge Foundation ten-year report)
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s statewide family-health brand, turning its clinicians’ guidance into free parent-facing resources plus a referral clinic.
Boston Children’s hub for childhood obesity, combining a long-running multidisciplinary weight clinic with research, education and community partnership.
Optimal Wellness for Life (OWL)
OWL on the Water
Boston Children’s fit kit
Their clinic was renamed from "Optimal Weight for Life" to "Optimal Wellness for Life" to reduce weight stigma. Older articles still use the former.
Treats children aged 2–18 through gradual change across eating, movement, sleep and mental health, with an on-site food pharmacy for food-insecure families.
Health and Well-being Clinic
Adolescent Bariatric Program
Food Pharmacy
The URL still says "healthy-weight-program" but the clinic is now titled the Health and Well-being Clinic.
A comprehensive pediatric metabolic-health program, with every visit staffed by a physician or nurse practitioner, a dietitian and an exercise physiologist.
HealthWorks! family-based weight management
HealthWorks! Camps Out
Fun2BFit
Reach
Cares for thousands of patients each year; describes itself as one of the largest pediatric weight management programs in the US(cincinnatichildrens.org)
The older /healthworks URL now 404s — link the centre page.
A tertiary-care pediatric obesity centre combining clinical care, education, research and advocacy, serving children from age 2 through adolescent bariatric surgery.
Family-based Medical Weight Management
Adolescent bariatric surgery
Project ECHO provider training
Nationwide Children’s files under more than a dozen EINs, so none is published here. The centre chairs the Healthy Kids Coalition of Central Ohio.
Treats children from birth to 18 who are gaining weight too quickly or have obesity-related conditions, across a lifestyle track and a medical-condition track.
Lifestyle Medicine Program
Weight Management Specialty Clinic
Three similarly named entities file in Aurora, so no EIN is published here. Free weekly exercise sessions run Monday to Thursday.
A five-discipline clinic — medicine, nutrition, fitness, behavioural health and surgery — building personalised plans for children and adolescents with obesity.
Healthy Lifestyle Clinic
Healthy Lifestyle Network
Demonstration-kitchen cooking classes
Tennessee has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in the country and, since its statewide foundation folded, very little else.
Runs the YMCA’s 15-week family weight-management program at no cost for northeast Florida children aged 7–13.
Healthy Weight and Your Child
Free, with no Y membership required; funded by the Florida Department of Health.
No screening policy published
Who knows what works
Every number in this guide came from somewhere, and mostly it came from these organizations. They do not need your Saturday morning — they need to be read, cited, and occasionally questioned about who funds them. Where a funder is material to how you should read the work, it is stated in the entry.
Researches how food marketing, school food environments and weight stigma drive childhood obesity, and turns that into state and federal policy.
Food FACTS report series
Rudd Resource Database
Weight Bias & Stigma research
Their Food FACTS reports are the most-cited independent audits of food and beverage marketing to US children. Founded at Yale and moved to UConn in 2015.
Funds and disseminates research on the policy and environmental changes that improve children’s diets, packaged as consensus guidance for practitioners.
Grant programs
Healthy Drinks, Healthy Kids
HER Nutrition Guidelines for the Charitable Food System
Their healthy beverage recommendations for children aged 0–5 were agreed by an expert panel with the AAP, the American Heart Association and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. A national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, hosted at Duke.
Develops, tests and costs out school, childcare and community interventions that prevent childhood obesity, and models which are worth the money.
CHOICES
CalFresh Healthy Living–CHOICES
OSNAP
Their CHOICES project lets a state or city compare the cost per unit of obesity prevented across candidate policies — rare and genuinely useful. CDC-funded through 2029. No industry funding.
Evaluates whether food policies — sugary drink taxes, front-of-package warning labels, marketing restrictions — actually change what children and families eat.
Bloomberg Food Policy Program evaluations
Research for Innovative Food Policy Fund
Their evaluations of Mexico’s sugary-drink tax are the evidence base most US tax campaigns cite. Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, NIH, the Duke Endowment and Wellcome — no food or beverage industry money.
Produces and translates research on Latino childhood obesity into bilingual advocacy materials and local change stories for families, schools and communities.
Salud Heroes
Action Packs
Take Action campaigns
Volunteers: An advocacy action pathway and monthly alerts rather than a volunteer program.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funding ended in 2021. Current funders include the National Hispanic Medical Association and Genentech, a pharmaceutical company — worth knowing when reading their work.
Litigates, petitions and campaigns against predatory food marketing to children and weak nutrition labelling, and publishes consumer nutrition journalism.
Predatory food marketing campaign
Front-of-package labeling
Nutrition Action
Public Interest Internship Program
Volunteers: A named Public Interest Internship Program, plus grassroots advocacy through the CSPI Action Fund.
Founded out of Ralph Nader’s Center for the Study of Responsive Law. Has historically refused industry funding. Link cspi.org — the familiar cspinet.org is now a redirect.
Tracks state-by-state childhood and adult obesity rates and pushes the federal and state prevention policy that would bring them down.
State of Obesity
State of Childhood Obesity
Promoting Health and Cost Control in States
Their State of Childhood Obesity site is the best public clearinghouse of state-level data. It began as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation property and is now run by TFAH.
Translates pediatric obesity science into clinical practice — guidelines, algorithms and quality-improvement work for the pediatricians who see these children.
Optimizing Healthcare
Engaging Families
Catalyzing Communities
Policy Opportunities Tool
The source of the 2023 Clinical Practice Guideline, the most consequential US clinical document on childhood obesity. The AAP’s own funders page names Nestlé as the Institute’s Founding Sponsor, with further funding from Nestlé Nutrition Institute and Danone Early Life Nutrition alongside the CDC, NIH and others. Readers should weigh that.
The US scientific society for obesity research and clinical care, convening the field and publishing its journals.
ObesityWeek
Obesity (journal)
End Weight Stigma Pledge
Reach
Approximately 2,800 members worldwide(obesity.org/about)
Volunteers: Members join committees and governance boards.
All-ages, with no separate pediatric section. Their corporate sponsorship was not verified, so this guide makes no claim about their independence either way.
The only standing national multisector forum on obesity, convening researchers, clinicians, government, business and people with lived experience.
Lived Experience collaborative
Business Engagement in Obesity Solutions
Physical Activity and Health
Its sponsors include General Mills, Mars, Walmart, Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly, alongside the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association. Not a front group — the National Academies’ process is public, and it runs an explicit business-engagement collaborative — but readers should know who is at the table.
Funds and trains state, local and tribal advocacy campaigns for the policies that shape children’s diets and activity.
Grant opportunities for advocacy campaigns
Campaign toolkits and trainings
Make Your Voice Heard
Reach
500+ state and community policy wins and $9.7 billion in public appropriations secured(voicesforhealthykids.org)
Volunteers: An advocacy action pathway and open grants for advocacy organizations, rather than a volunteer program.
An initiative of the American Heart Association rather than a 501(c)(3) of its own, so it has no EIN. If you are looking for funding for a local campaign, this is the most direct route in this guide.
Writes the model laws, zoning codes and legal toolkits that local governments use to change children’s food and activity environments.
Model zoning and licensing laws
Playground and trail development resources
Their childhood obesity work is described on their own history page as early-2000s; today they describe themselves as a health-equity law and policy organization. The obesity-prevention toolkits remain in use.
No screening policy published
Where there is nothing left
We asked one researcher to concentrate on the ten states with the highest childhood obesity rates, on the reasonable assumption that this is where the most work would be happening. Five of those states came back empty.
Not thinly covered. Empty. In four of the five, the organization you would expect to find is dead, government-run, or an academic centre rather than something a person can join.
State
Rate
What we found
Mississippi
24.3%
the highest childhood obesity rate in the country, and no verifiable active childhood-obesity nonprofit we could find
West Virginia
23.0%
a hospital programme with no content dated since 2024, and a sister programme whose domain no longer resolves
Arkansas
22.7%
a statewide coalition founded in 2007 whose site now serves a blank page
Louisiana
20.9%
an all-ages restaurant-nutrition initiative, and nothing child-specific we could verify
Alabama
20.2%
a children's hospital clinic — the one bright spot in this list
Two of those domains are worse than dead. Eat Smart Move More South Carolina once coordinated 27 affiliated coalitions across 31 counties; its web address now sells payment-gateway scripts and a memecoin presale platform. The Governor’s Foundation for Health and Wellness, created in Tennessee in 2013, still has Healthy Tennessee branding at the top of its old domain — above a guide to online betting sites. A nonprofit called ChopChop Family published a children’s cooking magazine; its domain is now an online casino affiliate.
In total, 13 domains in this field have lapsed and been re-registered or now redirect somewhere unrelated. We name them in our research notes and link none of them. Anyone writing about childhood obesity from memory, or from an AI summary, will link several.
The pattern underneath this is the finding. The states where children are heaviest are the states where the independent nonprofit infrastructure has thinned out or collapsed, leaving hospital clinics and state agencies. If you live in one of them and you were looking for somewhere local to help, we are sorry to report that there may not be one — and that is worth knowing before you spend a Saturday looking.
How to help
If you want to give time. The organizations in this guide with a working volunteer route are marked with a green button. The strongest volunteer operations we found are Girls on the Run, Playworks, Special Olympics, Brighter Bites, KABOOM!, Greater Richmond Fit4Kids and Katie’s Krops. Three of those four organizations that publish screening policies are in that list, which is probably not a coincidence — organizations that think carefully about volunteers tend to think carefully about all of it.
If you run one of these organizations. Write down what you already do about screening and put it on your volunteer page. Most of you screen. Almost none of you say so, and the result is that a parent deciding whether to let their nine-year-old join your programme has nothing to go on. It costs a paragraph.
If you are designing a children’s programme. Take EASO’s advice, which is the most actionable sentence in the entire evidence base: build messages about balanced food, movement and sleep for all children, not only for children with obesity. A programme that singles out the heaviest child in the room has already done harm that its curriculum cannot undo.
If you are funding this work. The Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation and Voices for Healthy Kids both run open grant programmes aimed at exactly the small organizations in this guide, and both are linked above.
How we built this
Six researchers worked separate, non-overlapping segments: national organizations, sport and active play, food and nutrition, regional and hospital programmes, research and policy bodies, and the medical evidence. Every organization listed here was checked against its own live website. Nothing in this guide was written from memory.
What we left out, and why. 83 organizations are listed. Others were found and excluded. The YMCA of the USA is absent because its own pages publish volunteer totals that differ by a factor of 2.4 and its site blocked every attempt to read it directly — we would rather omit a household name than print a number we cannot stand behind. Four more organizations are out pending someone opening a page by hand that blocks automated access. A “Children Obesity Foundation” appears in AI-generated search summaries of this field; we could not verify that any US nonprofit exists under that name, and it is not here.
Figures we declined to print. Several organizations publish reach numbers that contradict other numbers on their own site — two different garden counts, two different state counts, two different produce totals. Where that happened we printed neither and said so in the entry. Several more publish undated statistics, or figures that trace back to a 2018 evaluation. Where a number comes from a third party rather than the organization itself, we say which.
On screening claims. Our data model physically cannot record “this organization does not screen volunteers.” It records “publishes a policy” or “not stated”, because the second is the only thing we actually know. 4 organizations publish; 24 do not. That is a finding about public disclosure, and nothing more.
On the medical sections. Prevalence, comorbidity, intervention and language guidance are drawn from primary sources — NHANES and NCHS, the AAP’s 2023 clinical practice guideline, the 2024 USPSTF recommendation, two 2024 Cochrane reviews, and EASO’s person-first language guide. Where sources disagree — and on the headline prevalence figure, on medication, and on food access, they do — we have given both positions rather than picking the tidier one.
Corrections. If your organization is listed here and something is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — including removing you. Email support@volunteerbadge.com. We would particularly like to hear from anyone whose screening policy exists but is not on their website, because that is the easiest correction in this guide to make.
About this series
VolunteerBadge Research Guides are original research into niches where volunteer screening matters. Each one maps the organizations doing the work, cites what is actually known, and is published free to be read, linked and corrected. This is the first.
